Christine Milne the luckiest politician in Australia

Paul Sheehan

The fluke election, the one that should never have been necessary, has provided many intriguing subplots, including a dramatic change in the political fortunes of two women. One is the unluckiest person in Australian politics. The other is the luckiest.

The unluckiest politician is a former army general, Linda Reynolds, who, running for the Liberals, won a seat in the Senate in last September’s federal election. She won the seat again in a recount. Only an improbable fluke could have prevented her from taking her place in the Senate on July 1. And that improbable fluke happened.

Conversely, the luckiest politician in Australia is Senator Christine Milne, the leader of the Greens. Her party lost its Senate seat in WA last September, then won it in a recount, then the knife-edge result was put in doubt when 1375 vote were lost, and the entire Senate vote annulled.

It has proved to be an extraordinary lucky break for Senator Milne and the Greens. Since becoming the party’s leader on April 13, 2012, an atrocious run of results had taken place on her watch:

September, 2012: NSW local government elections – Greens suffer disastrous loss of 26 of their 48 seats in local councils.

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October, 2012: ACT elections – Greens lose three of their four seats in the legislative assembly.

This result in Milne’s home state of Tasmania was an emphatic rejection of her party, in the state where the Australian Greens were forged. Yet the senator appeared not even remotely chastened by the result.

What got Milne and her party out of reverse gear on Saturday was a remarkable combination of good fortune. The Labor Party imploded in WA, leaving the left side of politics wide open. Labor ran a divided ticket, had a lacklustre federal leader and was tarred by union corruption in the west.

On the conservative side, Clive Palmer split the vote, far outspending the Coalition. He ran a single issue campaign, that WA was being "raped" by having so much of its GST revenue recycled to other states.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott also scored a spectacular own-goal in the run-up to the election when he revived knighthoods and dames, without consulting cabinet, or common election sense.

The election gods also smiled on the Greens. The decision by the Court of Disputed Returns to require a new election seven months after the Coalition took office created a de facto byelection. This is almost never a good result for government. The swing against government is traditionally around 4 per cent or 5 per cent, which happened on Saturday.

If ever there were a perfect storm of good fortune for the Greens, it was this one, and the main victim was Labor, whose primary vote shrunk to a record low of 21.5 per cent.

Whatever criticism can be made of Abbott, he is proving to be remarkably adept at killing off the careers of highly ambitious Labor federal leaders. He destabilised Kevin Rudd, outlasted Julia Gillard, easily defeated Rudd and has now consigned a federal Labor leader, for the fourth time, to the danger zone.

Unless Opposition Leader Bill Shorten can produce a remarkable turnaround in his fortunes – and Milne has shown that even the most lacklustre leader can be saved by fortune – he will look like Bill Short-term or Bill Short-circuit. Only Rudd’s introduction of a monolithic leadership process, which gives a tremendous advantage to the incumbent, will keeps Shorten safe. That and Labor’s lost appetite for regicide.

The royal commission into union corruption, which will feature Shorten’s union power base, the Australian Workers Union, will not help him. It is not exactly a prescription for dynamic leadership after Labor’s debacle in WA.

If Milne is the luckiest leader in politics, Palmer United Party Senate hopeful in WA Dio Wang is the most fortunate candidate. Four years ago, he wasn’t even an Australian citizen. After migrating to Australia from China in 2003, Wang, a civil engineer, started a mining company, Australasian Resources. It was saved from insolvency by Palmer. The same generous Palmer has now bankrolled Wang into the Senate. Another improbable subplot.

With five of the six Senate seats all but decided, it may take weeks for the sixth winner to be revealed, either the luckless Reynolds or Labor’s No.2 candidate, Louise Pratt.

Typical of Labor’s dysfunction in this election, Pratt was lampooned last November by Joe Bullock, the No.1 candidate on Labor’s ticket, for being a lesbian who married a transsexual man.

Pratt’s survival in the Senate does not look promising. The ABC’s preference flow calculator has Reynolds shading Pratt for the final seat, but only just. This would give the Coalition the three Senate seats it won last September, and restore the status quo. But not without enormous profligacy with the public’s time and money because 1375 ballot papers out of 1.25 million, or 0.001 per cent, went missing.